High-risk procurement analytics and scoring system

Abstract

A procurement analysis system may include a network interface to interface with one or more data sources over a network to receive procurement data and a data storage device to store model building data sets determined from the procurement data. A model generator module may determine procurement scoring models from the model building data sets, and a procurement risk analysis module may determine an evaluation capacity to review bids for a procurement, and evaluate bids for the procurement based on the procurement scoring models and the evaluation capacity to identify high-risk procurements associated with the evaluated bids.

Description

PRIORITY[0001]This patent application claims priority to U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 61 / 494,839, filed on Jun. 8, 2011, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety.GOVERNMENT RIGHTS[0002]This invention was made with government support under contract number SP4701-07-A-001 awarded by the Defense Logistics Agency. The government has certain rights in the invention.BACKGROUND[0003]Historically, an area of great concern to government and industry has been the identification of high-risk procurements. An example of a high-risk procurement may be paying an exuberant amount of money per item, such as $150.00 per screwdriver, when these items may be purchased off-the-shelf for a fraction of the cost.[0004]High-risk procurements have a high probability of outside scrutiny, and potentially represent a risk for fraud, waste and abuse. High-risk procurements in the past have resulted in negative publicity and investigations that consume considerable leadership time and t...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0006]According to an embodiment, a procurement analysis system may include a network interface to interface with one or more data sources over a network to receive procurement data. The system may include a data storage device to store model building data sets determined from the procurement data, and a model generator module, which may be executed by a processor, to determine procurement scoring models from the model building data sets and to store the procurement scoring models in the data storage. The procurement scoring models may include a price risk scoring model, a supplier risk scoring model and an item risk scoring model, and the procurement risk analysis module may determine a scoring scale of scores associated with each procurement scoring model and determine a threshold for each scale identifying a high-risk procurement. The scoring scale and the threshold may be the same for each of the scoring models.

[0007]The system may also include a procurement risk analysis module, which may be executed by the processor, to determine an evaluation capacity to review bids for a procurement, and to evaluate bids for the procurement based on the procurement scoring models and the evaluation capacity to identify high-risk procurements associated with the evaluated bids. The system may include a dashboard comprised of a graphical user interface to provide illustrations of price risk, supplier risk and item risk for the bids based on the evaluation of the bids.

[0008]In another embodiment, a procurement analysis system may include a network interface to interface with one or

Problems solved by technology

High-risk procurements have a high probability of outside scrutiny, and potentially represent a risk for fraud, waste and abuse.

High-risk procurements in the past have resulted in negative publicity and investigations that consume considerable leadership time and taxpayer dollars.

However, when considering past procurements that have resulted in extensive outside scrutiny and consumed considerable leadership time to address them, not all of these procurement actions have fit the high dollar value model.

In an environment where there are thousands of procurements, these type of high-risk procurements may be vast and result in a significant amount of unnecessary expenditures.

Images